Michael Cohen Offered Tech Firm Red Finch Solutions $50,000 To Rig Two Online Polls For Trump

Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump‘s former personal lawyer, offered a technology firm and its owner $50,000 to rig two 2016 online polls in Trump’s favor, it was reported Thursday.

According to The Wall Street Journal, longtime fixer Cohen gave John Gauger — the owner of Red Finch Solutions — a bag that contained between $12,000 and $13,000 in cash when the two met at Cohen’s Trump Organization office in 2015. In the bag, Cohen also reportedly placed a boxing glove he claimed belonged to a Brazilian mixed martial arts fighter. However, Cohen never paid Gauger the rest of the $50,000 he offered.

Cohen commented on the Journal’s article on Twitter Thursday morning, writing: “I truly regret my blind loyalty to a man who doesn’t deserve it,” after saying Trump directed him to rig the polls.

As for the @WSJ article on poll rigging, what I did was at the direction of and for the sole benefit of @realDonaldTrump @POTUS. I truly regret my blind loyalty to a man who doesn’t deserve it.

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— Michael Cohen (@MichaelCohen212) January 17, 2019

Cohen, 52, previously implicated Trump — who was his client for more than a decade — in another scandal. Last year, Cohen said the president ordered him to make hush money payments to women with whom he had extramarital affairs, like porn star Stormy Daniels. After taking a plea deal in August and drawing charges of campaign finance violations and bank and tax fraud, Cohen was sentenced last month to three years in prison. He also pleaded guilty in November to lying to Congress about his involvement in a Trump Tower real estate deal in Moscow in 2016.

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The Journal also reported that Cohen asked Gauger — who is Liberty University’s chief investment officer — to create a Twitter account called @WomenForCohen and demanded it be run by a female friend of Gauger’s who could depict Cohen as a “sex symbol” and thus benefit Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

The profile was formed in May 2016 and its last tweet was seven months later, just weeks before Trump took office:

We can’t wait!!! You will do a fantastic job! You are amazing leader & speaker #ThanksDonald #AmericaFirst https://t.co/0iuc1ODlzb

— Women For Cohen (@WomenForCohen) December 29, 2016

On Feb. 7, Cohen will testify before the House Oversight Committee about work he performed for Trump.

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